3rd February 1905.

Esteemed Comrade!

In your letter you touch upon the question of which of the two Factions of our (R.S.D.R.P.) party bears guilt for the split. You mention that you have requested the opinion of German Social Democrats and the International Bureau on this matter. We consider ourselves obliged, in view of this, to set forth for you how the split came about. We shall confine ourselves to presenting precisely established facts, excluding, insofar as possible, any judgment upon them.

Until the end of 1903, our party was an aggregate of disconnected local Social-Democratic organizations, called committees. The Central Committee and Central Organ, elected at the party's first congress (spring 1898), were absent. The police destroyed them, and they were not restored. Abroad, a split had occurred between the "Union of Russian Social Democrats" (organ—"Rabochee Delo," whence "Rabochedeltsы") and Plekhanov. On the side of the latter stood the newspaper "Iskra," founded in 1900. For three years, from 1900 to 1903, "Iskra" acquired an overwhelming influence upon the Russian committees. "Iskra" upheld the ideas of revolutionary Social Democracy against "Economism" (alias "Rabochedelstvo"—the Russian variety of opportunism). The absence of party unity weighed upon all. Finally, in August 1903, it proved possible to convene the party's second congress abroad. All Russian committees participated, the Bund (an independent organization of the Jewish proletariat), and both foreign Factions: the "Iskrist" and the "Rabochedelets."

All congress participants recognized the congress as lawful. The struggle at the congress was waged between the Iskrists and the anti-Iskrists (the Rabochedeltsы and the Bund), with the so-called "swamp" occupying the middle. The Iskrists won. They carried through the party program (the "Iskra" draft was approved). "Iskra" was recognized as the Central Organ, its direction as the direction of the party. A series of resolutions on tactics were in its spirit; the organizational statute (Lenin's draft) was adopted in the Iskrist form, only in particulars was it worsened by the anti-Iskrists, with the participation of a minority of Iskrists. The grouping of votes at the congress was as follows: altogether 51 votes, of which 33 were Iskrist (24 Iskrists of the present majority, 9 Iskrists of the present minority), 10—the "swamp," and 8 anti-Iskrists (3 Rabochedeltsы and 5 Bundists). Toward the end of the congress, before the elections, seven delegates (2 Rabochedeltsы and 5 Bundists) withdrew from the congress (the Bund withdrew from the party). Then the minority of Iskrists, supported, owing to the errors they had made, by all the anti-Iskrists and the swamp, found itself in the minority of the congress (24 and 9 + 10 + 1, i.e., 24 and 20). In the election of central institutions, it was decided to elect three persons to the editorial board of the C.O. and three to the C.C. Of the six persons from the old editorial board of "Iskra" (Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Starover, Lenin, and Martov), the following were elected: Plekhanov, Lenin, and Martov. To the C.C., it was desired to elect two from the majority and one from the minority. Martov refused to enter the editorial board without the three "excluded" (unelected) comrades, and the entire minority refused to be elected to the C.C. No one has ever disputed, nor does anyone dispute even now, the lawfulness of the elections, but the minority after the congress refused to work under the direction of the centers chosen by the congress. This boycott lasted three months: from the end of August 1903 to the end of November 1903. "Iskra" (issues 46-51) was edited by Plekhanov and Lenin together. The minority formed a secret organization within the party (a fact now certified in print by the very supporters of the minority and not denied by anyone at present). The Russian committees by an overwhelming majority (12 out of 14 committees that had managed to express themselves) spoke out against this disorganizing boycott. But Plekhanov, following the stormy congress of the foreign "League" (the foreign organization of the party), which took place at the very end of October 1903, decided to yield to the minority, declaring before the entire party, in an article "What Is Not To Be Done" (No. 52 of "Iskra," November 1903), that in order to avoid a split, one must sometimes yield even to those who mistakenly incline toward revisionism and act as anarchical individualists (the italicized expressions are Plekhanov's actual expressions in the article "What Is Not To Be Done"). Lenin withdrew from the editorial board, unwilling to go against the congress resolutions. Plekhanov then coöpted all four former editors. The Russian committees declared that they would see what the direction of the new "Iskra" would be, would see whether the Mensheviks entered the editorial board for the sake of peace.

It turned out, as the Bolsheviks had predicted, that the direction of the old "Iskra" was not maintained, and the new Menshevik editorial board did not bring peace to the party. The direction of "Iskra" turned so far toward the old Rabochedelstvo, rejected by the second congress, that Trotsky himself, a prominent member of the minority, who published the programmatic pamphlet "Our Political Tasks," a pamphlet issued under the editorship of the new "Iskra," declared literally: "Between the old and new 'Iskra' lies an abyss." We confine ourselves to this pronouncement of our opponent in order not to enter into lengthy explanations of the principled instability of "Iskra." On the other hand, the "secret organization of the minority" did not disband but continued to boycott the C.C. This secret split of the party into open and secret organization was intolerably impeding the work. An enormous majority of the Russian committees that had expressed themselves on the crisis decisively condemned both the direction of the new Iskra and the disorganizing behavior of the minority. From all sides came demands for the immediate convening of a third congress to extricate the party from this unbearable situation.

According to our party statute, a declaration from organizations possessing together half the total number of votes is required for the convening of an extraordinary congress (ordinary congresses are convened every two years if possible). Half had already been assembled. But then the C.C. betrayed the majority, taking advantage of the arrest of several of its members belonging to the majority. Under the pretext of "reconciliation," the C.C. members remaining after the arrests entered into a deal with the secret organization of the minority and declared that this organization was dissolving, whereupon, secretly from the party and contrary to written declarations of the C.C., five Mensheviks were coöpted into the C.C. This coöptation took place in November or December 1904. Thus the minority struggled from August 1903 to November 1904, tearing apart the entire party over the coöptation of three to the C.O. and three to the C.C. The central institutions thus falsified answered the congress's demand with abuse or silence.

Then the patience of the Russian committees snapped. They began to convene their own separate conferences. To date, three conferences have taken place: 1) of four Caucasian committees; 2) of three southern ones (Odessa, Nikolaev, and Ekaterinoslav), and 3) of six northern ones (Petersburg, Moscow, Tver, Riga, "North"—i.e., Yaroslavl, Kostroma, and Vladimir, and finally Nizhny-Novgorod). All these conferences spoke out for the "majority," decided to support the literary group of the majority (the group of Lenin, Riadovoi [A. A. Bogdanov], Orlovsky [V. V. Vorovskii], Galerka [M. S. Olminski], Voinov [A. V. Lunacharsky], and others), and elected their own bureau. The third, i.e., the northern conference, instructed this bureau to transform itself into an Organizational Committee and to convene a congress of Russian committees, i.e., the third congress of the party, independent of the foreign centers that had broken away from the party. Such was the state of affairs as of January 1st, 1905 (new style). The bureau of the committees of the majority began its work (owing to our police conditions, the convening of the congress will of course be delayed for several months: the second congress was announced in December 1902, but was convened in August 1903). The literary group of the majority founded the organ of the majority, the newspaper "Vpered," which began to be published weekly from January 4th, new style, 1905.

Now (3rd February 1905), four issues have already appeared. The direction of the newspaper "Vpered" is the direction of the old "Iskra." In the name of the old Iskra, "Vpered" resolutely struggles against the new Iskra.

In fact, therefore, there have turned out to be two R.S.D.R. Parties. One with the organ Iskra, "officially" called the Central Organ of the party, with a Central Committee, with four Russian committees out of twenty (the remaining committees in Russia, apart from the twenty that were at the 2nd congress, arose subsequently, and the question of the lawfulness of their confirmation is a disputed question). The other party, with the organ "Vpered," with the "bureau of Russian committees of the majority," with fourteen committees in Russia (the thirteen mentioned above and the Voronezh, and probably also the Saratov, Ural, Tula, and Siberian committees; in any case, all four of the latter committees after the 2nd party congress spoke in favor of the "majority").

On the side of the "new Iskrists" stand all opponents of the old Iskra: all Rabochedeltsы and the majority of the party-adjacent intelligentsia. On the side of the "Vperedists"—all those principally convinced of the old Iskra and the majority of conscious advanced workers and practical party activists in Russia. Plekhanov, who at the 2nd party congress (August 1903) and at the League congress (October 1903) was a Bolshevik and who from November 1903 has desperately struggled against the majority, declared publicly on September 2nd, 1904 (this opinion has been published) that the forces of both sides are approximately equal. We, Bolsheviks, assert that on our side stands the majority of genuine Russian party activists. The principal cause of the split and the principal obstacle to unification we consider to be the disorganizing behavior of the minority, which refused to submit to the resolutions of the 2nd congress and preferred a split to the convening of a 3rd congress.

At the present time the Mensheviks are producing splits of local organizations throughout Russia. Thus in Petersburg they prevented the committee from organizing a demonstration on November 28 (see "Vpered"). Now they have split off in Petersburg into a separate group, called the "group at the C.C." and opposing the local party committee. They have recently founded a similar local group ("at the C.C.") for struggle against the committee in Odessa. The Menshevik central institutions of the party have been compelled, owing to the falsity of their position, to disorganize the local work of the party, for these central institutions refused to submit to the decision of the committees that elected them.

The principled disagreements between "Vpered" and the new Iskra are essentially the same as those that existed between the old Iskra and "Rabochee Delo." We consider these disagreements important, but provided the possibility of fully upholding our views, the views of the old Iskra, we should not consider these disagreements in themselves an obstacle to working together in a single party.

Editorial Board of the newspaper "Vpered": N. Lenin
N. Orlovsky [V. V. Vorovskii]
A. Voinov [A. V. Lunacharsky]
Riadovoi [A. A. Bogdanov].

Foreign Plenipotentiary of the Russian Bureau of Committees of the Majority Stepanov [A. M. Essén].

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*) In No. 83 of "Iskra" of January 20 (7), 1905, in the section "From the Party," there is published a resolution adopted at a conference of the C.C. with representatives of the minority: "we, members of the minority, in view of the agreement concluded between our plenipotentiaries and the C.C., and in view of the possibility, i.e., the actual unification of the party... are terminating our separate existence in the party." In the same issue the C.C. reported that the Mensheviks had surrendered their organizational connections to the C.C., declaring the organizational separateness of the minority to be liquidated.